I’m Feeling Strong “Let’s Make It Worse” Vibes

It is my sense that there is a major shift underway in this country. https://t.co/adtymFxjV7

— Heather Cox Richardson (TDPR) (@HC_Richardson) January 12, 2024

Context:

Evangelicals have buyer's remorse for 'deal with devil' that let MAGA devour church: op-edhttps://t.co/0Vgum9oq6q

— Raw Story (@RawStory) January 12, 2024

Goldberg cites Tim Alberta's recent book “The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory,” which is full of preachers and evangelical activists expressing second thoughts about their unwavering support for Trump. One is Texas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, who said that he had "perhaps" crossed a line with his boosting of Trump. 

There's also former member of Trump’s evangelical advisory board Mike Evans, who wrote in an essay saying that he left a Trump rally “in tears because I saw Bible believers glorifying Donald Trump like he was an idol.” Even the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins told Alberta that Trump "went a little too far." 

"But if the polls are right, Iowa’s evangelicals don’t care what their ostensible leaders think. Trump’s rise has been accompanied by a collapse in trust in many American institutions once valued by the right, including the F.B.I. and the military, and that loss of faith extends to many religious authorities," Goldberg writes. 

"As Alberta, the son of a conservative evangelical pastor, documented, preachers who’ve balked at parts of the MAGA agenda have been abandoned by many of their congregants." 

According to Goldberg, the Trump-evangelical phenomenon has caused a version of evangelicalism "that sometimes seems like a brand-new religion" to emerge. 

"There’s no way to know if evangelical leaders could have prevented this devolution of their faith by joining together to stand up to Trump before he became such a mythic figure. But now, more than seven years into their deal with the devil, it’s probably too late."

"Be careful what you ask for” and “baptized heathens” come to mind. As well as Paul’s anger: “You stupid Galatians! Who has bewitched you?” But we have to leave the exegesis of Paul’s cri de couer for another time. The question here is: what happened?

My short and sweet response is that evangelicals and their even more radical cousins the fundamentalists took a chapter from their spiritual ancestors, the American Puritans, and long ago decided that if they couldn’t run society according to their lights (William Bradford’s attempts at Plymouth colony failed within a few years. He couldn’t keep ‘em down on the farm after they’d seen Paree), they’d just run their churches their way. Which was fair enough, but sometime in the 1970’s Jerry Falwell got the bug to run things, and to cut to the chase, here we are.

And a damned fine mess it is, too.

Now my sympathies are for the “follow the rebel Jesus” crowd. And I’m all for living in the basilea tou theou. But we aren’t going to get there by replacing Caesar with a different Caesar. Christianity through politics is not ultimately going to work, and the object lesson there is when the Christianity of the Rev. Dr. King came up against the Christianity of the Christian churches he addressed in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” or from the pulpit of Riverside Church when he condemned the Vietnam War. As ol’ Ez said to Robert Browning: “There can be but one ‘Sordello.’ But Sordello, and my Sordello?”

Which one does the super supermajority impose on the minority? As Reinhold Niebuhr pointed out, societies cannot be moral entities. Who among us would countenance a father physically sacrificing his children for his moral principles? Thomas More was very proud of his morality, but he really left his family in the shit. Would Abraham really be as admirable if he had plunged the knife into Isaac? As it is, honestly, he’s a little scary.

So, again in a nutshell, thanks for the offer, but no thanks. Evangelicals and fundamentalists were wiser to stay out of the world’s politics, even as I’d have liked to see them engage the world through charity and help to the poor, the sick, the imprisoned. But giving Caesar what is Caesar’s is not just about whose image is on the coin (does it bother anybody else how close our coinage is to ancient Rome’s? No? Just me, then? Fair enough.) It’s about what you leave to Caesar, and what responsibilities you take for yourself. The speck in your sister’s eye, after all, is just the reflection of the log in yours.

Gotta keep that in mind when you want to tell other people what to do.